“But this is paap”, I found myself slipping into a language I don’t normally use. We had stopped at a small village in Mahoba, and were asking people about their accessibility to subsidised food. The local ration shop owner (Kotedar) was present there, as was the food inspector – on orders from the district administration. The two evidently got along very well. Despite their best efforts to tutor everyone before our arrival, the unpleasant truth was tumbling out.
Many visibly poor families were being denied their quota of subsidised food-grain. Many poor women were agitated, while the Kotedar remained nonchalant. I thought it was pointless to use the language of law, entitlements or procedures, and tried to speak to the Kotedar’s sense of paap and punya. How could he possibly deny people food during a drought? He was unmoved.
Throughout the padyatra, the one subject that aroused maximum interest was food-grain through the public distribution system. Women would begin to focus on the proceedings as soon as we asked a question about ration. Every meeting was a revelation. We thought we were there to inform the people about how the apex court had added to their entitlements, under the National Food Security Act of 2013.
The Act mandates that every “priority household” (meaning a family eligible for ration, about two-thirds of the entire population) must get five kg of food-grain per person per month at a subsidised rate of Rs two per kg for wheat and Rs 3 per kg for rice. The Supreme Court order had extended this benefit to all households, not just those in the “priority” list. We were to discover that most villagers were not able to access even the existing entitlements.
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